I was pretty excited when I learned how to embed YouTube videos in the blog. Not rocket science, but for a guy who typed college term papers on a manual typewriter (a what? my daughter's generation would ask), it's something to be pleased with.

I came across this video from the Wildcat Mountain website. It does not live on YouTube and I have no idea how long it will exist, but I cracked the embedding code, so here it is, I hope.

The video is a day old and not as clever as some of the stuff coming out of Mount Snow in southern Vermont that lives on YouTube, but I'm posting it because every time I go to Wildcat in northern New Hampshire I have a great time. It's a mountain you must put on your "to do" list.

Here are excerpts from a column I wrote about Wildcat for the Times of Trenton in January, 2005:

I visited Wildcat last Sunday, after a storm coated the mountain with several inches of fresh snow. Despite perfect weather conditions, the crowd was sparse, and as I rode up a lift with a ski patroller, he joked that the resort's slogan should be ``Ski Wildcat; nobody else does.''

Family-owned Wildcat sits in an undeveloped area in Pinkham Notch, between lodging options in Jackson, nine miles to the south, and Gorham, nine miles to the north. It's located across from Mount Washington, the tallest mountain in the Northeast, and its trails offer spectacular views. Because of its location, the mountain sometimes suffers severe weather conditions, which is one reason for the small-crowd conditions.

Wildcat's ski history began in 1933, when the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps hand-cleared the Wildcat Trail, one of the first ski racing runs created in the United States.

The resort still has the look and feel of an old-time ski area and an undeserved reputation as a tough mountain to ski, which also keeps the crowds down. The trails are narrow and snake down the mountain, but over the years many have been widened just enough so that intermediates can make easy turns on the way down. Plenty of gladed (tree) skiing awaits those looking to be challenged. Beginners will delight in the meandering, three-mile Polecat Trail while they take in some of the best views on the East Coast.

The base lodge and its cafeteria and pub are a pretty simple deal compared to lodges found at modern resorts, but people come here to ski, not sit. The most recent addition to Wildcat keeps the sitting to a minimum. The Wildcat Express, a high-speed detachable quad chairlift, installed in 1997 and billed as one of the longest, fastest quads in New Hampshire and ``possibly the fastest in the Northeast.''

In the summer, the chairs on the Wildcat Express are replaced with enclosed gondola cabins for sightseers. Though winter riders would enjoy the protection from the elements that a gondola provides, marketing director Irene Donnell* said the cabins aren't as resistant to the winter winds as open chairs and the gondola runs at half the speed of the chair lift.

*Irene Donnell is now at the Mount Washington Resort. Thomas Prindle, the star of the video, is the current marketing director.